Free And Now You Can Go by Vendela Vida Page A

about near-deaths?" I ask, still hopeful. And then I feel bad. There are worse things than this, much worse.

    "Excuse me?" she asks. I imagine this owner-representative crying over the death of a sibling, a lover. I picture her ordering a bouquet of flowers to send to someone grieving. "Anything but carnations," she might say to the FTD florist.

    "Never mind," I say.

    I take the train to Philadelphia for the day. I want to go to the Museum of Art to research one of my overdue papers. It's on Degas's and Bonnard's nude women emerging from baths. I need to see the paintings.

    From the train station in Philadelphia I take a taxi. I pass signs that say "Walk! Philadelphia" everywhere I go. Exclamation points , I think, are so misused !

    The museum is huge but I don't need a map. I find the nude women quickly; I gravitate toward them. I stand in front of them, close up and then at a distance, and then close up again. Really close-up. I want to feel the water, and their skin. But everywhere there are guards and signs that say "Do Not Touch." There's a small picture of a statue with a shiny nose and an explanation of how salts and oils in my fingers could destroy great works of art. Destroy! Philadelphia , I think.

    I walk and walk, wanting to touch, but not being able to.

    Sarah claims she was taken to museums too early in life. Now, whenever she goes, she gets what she calls "museum feet." I try to convince myself the museum is why my feet hurt now, still.

    In the room of Dadaist art, I try to make sense of Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even . Too many museum-goers are also staring at the painting, which is on two panes of glass that together are the size of a department store window. On the upper pane, the bride is hanging from a rope, or perhaps she's been crucified. The bachelors crowd together below.

    "What do you think she did wrong?" a woman in a beret asks her husband.

    "How can a bride have nine bachelors and no husband?" a teenage boy asks his mom. He stares at the plaque bearing the title, as if to be sure.

    I don't want to hear anybody's answer. I move into a small side room that's devoid of people—and of art. Maybe the room's for storage. Or an upcoming exhibit. There's nothing on the walls in front of me, or to my right. But then I notice the large wooden gate at the left end of the room. The gate is framed by a brick archway.

    I walk toward the gate's doors, which look like those of a barn. I try to open them, but they won't budge. I peer through a crack and see a woman's body, naked, prostrate, abandoned on a hillside. In her left hand she holds a gas lamp, still glowing.

    From where I'm standing, I can't see the woman's face. I have to see it. Who did this to her? Was she on a picnic ? I tug hard on the weathered doors. They won't open. I can only see the woman through one little crack in the wood, but I can't get near, can't see, can't touch.

    I bang on the gate with my right hand, and then twice with both fists. I stop myself. I turn around, put my back up against the wooden doors, and stare at the blank wall on the other side of the small room.

II

Stolen Jesus

    Christmas vacation, finally.

    I go back to San Francisco, to my family. I arrive home full of hope and expectation, an open parachute inside my chest. But after one day I'm restless. I have no plans for the three weeks before classes begin.

    "Why don't you go out with your friends?" my mother says. "I don't want to," I say. "I have no friends," I lie.
    She sighs.

    I feel like a useless present she's been given and doesn't know what to do with.

    "Anna, let her be," my father says. He's Polish and says her name so it sounds like the last two syllables in "banana." She gave up on correcting him shortly after they were engaged.

    People have never commented on the four years my father was gone—not to us, anyway. One day we came back home from the grocery store and found him on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune;